Quaker

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Quaker \Quak"er\, n.
     1. One who quakes.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. One of a religious sect founded by George {Fox}, of
        Leicestershire, England, about 1650, -- the members of


        which call themselves Friends. They were called Quakers,
        originally, in derision. See {Friend}, n., 4.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Fox's teaching was primarily a preaching of
              repentance . . . The trembling among the listening
              crowd caused or confirmed the name of Quakers given
              to the body; men and women sometimes fell down and
              lay struggling as if for life.        --Encyc. Brit.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. (Zool.)
        (a) The nankeen bird.
        (b) The sooty albatross.
        (c) Any grasshopper or locust of the genus {Edipoda}; --
            so called from the quaking noise made during flight.
            [1913 Webster]
  
     {Quaker buttons}. (Bot.) See {Nux vomica}.
  
     {Quaker gun}, a dummy cannon made of wood or other material;
        -- so called because the sect of Friends, or Quakers, hold
        to the doctrine, of nonresistance.
  
     {Quaker ladies} (Bot.), a low American biennial plant
        ({Houstonia c[ae]rulea}), with pretty four-lobed corollas
        which are pale blue with a yellowish center; -- also
        called {bluets}, and {little innocents}.
        [1913 Webster]

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Nankeen \Nan*keen"\, n. [So called from its being originally
     manufactured at Nankin (Nanjing), in China.] [Written also
     {nankin}.]
     1. A species of cloth, of a firm texture, originally brought
        from China, made of a species of cotton ({Gossypium
        religiosum}) that is naturally of a brownish yellow color
        quite indestructible and permanent.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. An imitation of this cloth by artificial coloring.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. pl. Trousers made of nankeen. --Ld. Lytton.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     {Nankeen bird} (Zool.), the Australian night heron
        ({Nycticorax Caledonicus}); -- called also {quaker}.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  Quaker
       n 1: a member of the Religious Society of Friends founded by
            George Fox (the Friends have never called themselves
            Quakers) [syn: {Friend}]
       2: one who quakes and trembles with (or as with) fear [syn: {trembler}]

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  QUAKERS. A sect of Christians.
       2. Formerly they were much persecuted on account of their peaceable 
  principles which forbade them to bear arms, and they were denied many rights 
  because they refused to make corporal oath. They are relieved in a great 
  degree from the consequent penalties for refusing to bear arms; and their 
  affirmations are everywhere in the United States, as is believed, taken 
  instead of their oaths.